Lifestreaming is the ongoing sharing of personal information to a networked audience, the creation of a digital portrait of one’s actions and thoughts. People who lifestream use software like Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare to track information about themselves and make it available to others. By networked audience, I mean the real and potential audience for digital content, made up of people who are connected both to the user and each other. Lifestreaming is the “always-on” aspect of social media, the constant pings and alerts that make smartphones so hard to ignore.

Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, loc. 538